Fiscal Space

In this note, the authors reexamine the issue of debt sustainability in a large group of advanced economies. Their hypothesis is that, when debt is in a moderate range, its dynamics are sustainable in the sense that increases in debt elicit sufficient increases in primary fiscal balances to stabiliz...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ostry, Jonathan
Other Authors: Ghosh, Atish, Kim, Jun, Qureshi, Mahvash
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Washington, D.C. International Monetary Fund 2010
Series:IMF Staff Position Notes
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: International Monetary Fund - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
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651 4 |a United States 
653 |a Fiscal stance 
653 |a Interest rates 
653 |a Public debt 
653 |a Finance 
653 |a Debt limits 
653 |a Public finance & taxation 
653 |a Financial services 
653 |a National Deficit Surplus 
653 |a Debt Management 
653 |a Fiscal Policy 
653 |a Debts, Public 
653 |a Debt 
653 |a Fiscal policy 
653 |a Asset and liability management 
653 |a Sovereign Debt 
653 |a Market interest rates 
653 |a Banks and Banking 
653 |a Macroeconomics 
653 |a Fiscal space 
653 |a Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects 
653 |a Financial Risk Management 
653 |a Public Finance 
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700 1 |a Kim, Jun 
700 1 |a Qureshi, Mahvash 
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520 |a In this note, the authors reexamine the issue of debt sustainability in a large group of advanced economies. Their hypothesis is that, when debt is in a moderate range, its dynamics are sustainable in the sense that increases in debt elicit sufficient increases in primary fiscal balances to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio. At high debt levels, however, the dynamics may turn unstable, and the debt ratio may not converge to a finite level. Such a framework allows the authors to define a “debt limit” that is consistent with a country’s historical track record of adjustment in the sense that, without an extraordinary fiscal effort, any debt increment beyond this limit would cause debt to increase without bound. This debt limit is not an absolute and immutable barrier, however, but rather defines a critical point above which a country’s normal fiscal response to rising debt becomes insufficient to maintain debt sustainability. Nor should this debt limit be interpreted as being in any sense the optimal level of public debt. Indeed, since this limit delineates the point at which fiscal solvency is called into question—and the analysis abstracts entirely from liquidity/rollover risk—prudence dictates that countries will typically want to be well below their debt limit. Given a country’s normal pattern of adjustment, “fiscal space” is then simply the difference between its debt limit and its current level of debt